In BofA Leak, Does Cuomo Have Agenda?

Some things to ponder about the events surrounding Bank of America CEO's Ken Lewis comments to investigators about the Merrill acquisition.

Lost in the discussion about Bank of America ( BAC) CEO Ken Lewis' culpability in keeping quiet about losses at Merrill Lynch is this: Did New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo leak the story?

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Lewis told investigators from Cuomo's office that Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked him to keep quiet about surprise losses at Merrill Lynch, which BofA was in the process of acquiring.

While I can't prove Cuomo leaked it to the Journal, there are many reasons to believe he did.

First, as The New York Times makes clear in a recent profile, Cuomo is a master media manipulator.

Second, the reporter who broke the story, The Wall Street Journal's Liz Rappaport, a former colleague of mine at Institutional Investor who also worked at TheStreet.com before I got here, led the Journal's coverage of Cuomo's investigation into auction rate securities. In other words, she is likely much closer to Cuomo's office than she is to Bank of America's top brass.

Third, prosecutors leak information about people they're investigating all the time. One veteran New York political PR man tells me Cuomo's agenda, like Elliot Spitzer's before him, and like that of most state attorneys general, is to bag as many big trophies as he can.

But who is the trophy here? Ken Lewis?

While some observers, including at TheStreet.com believe Lewis should have informed his shareholders of the Merrill problems anyway, others believe the story makes Lewis look sympathetic.